How can a beginner entrepreneur decide which eCommerce solution will be the best for his future business? This article compares two leading eCommerce solutions – OpenCart vs PrestaShop.
He can rely on reviews on the internet, rating,s or opinions of his friends and competitors.
This way the retailer will make up his mind fast, but trained on mostly personal opinion.
The best method in this situation is an honest and multifold comparison of several eCommerce platform features.
Basic Information about Opencart & PrestaShop
OpenCart
OpenCart Templates is a self-hosted eCommerce Solution, Created around ten or more years ago by Daniel Kerr.
It is written in PHP programming language with HTML Components and MySQL database and is supported by Mac and Windows.
According to OpenCart’s statistics, there are currently 300,000 online stores working on this eCommerce solution.
OpenCart is a solution with a pretty primary range of eCommerce functionalities, but this is maybe what makes it so beautiful to retailers, especially the ones who launch their online business for the first time.
Extra impressive advantage of OpenCart is lifetime free support and free software updates.
Yet if you will need more advanced skills than managing products and categories and processing orders, you will need to find a similar extension for this.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a French eCommerce platform, published in 2005. It is open-source and free, written in PHP programming language, and runs on Smarty Template Engine.
Best PrestaShop Themes is agreeable with Linx, Unix, and Windows Operating Systems. At the moment, the number of online stores globally that run on PrestaShop amounts to 270,000.
What is the secret of PrestaShop’s popularity? First of all, It is highly scalable, meaning.
It can be successfully modified for small businesses as well as between large-scale eCommerce enterprises.
At the same time, PrestaShop wins users over with how intuitive and simple it is.
Another significant advantage worth mentioning is the ability to run multiple stores from one admin panel. The capability that appeals to merchants that look to the future.
Customer Features: OpenCart Vs PrestaShop
OpenCart
OpenCart has a less important amount of customer functionalities, but is still rather decent:
- Guest Account
- Customer Testimonials
- Featured Products
- Image Zoom
- Multiple Addresses
- Newsletter
- Popular Products
- Printing-friendly
PrestaShop
Since eCommerce is all about providing your users with the utmost customer experience. The range of custom features makes a huge difference in the choice of an eCommerce platform.
PrestaShop offers the following client capabilities:
- Guest Account
- Customer Testimonial
- Featured Products
- Glossary and Tooltip Words
- Image Zoom
- Multiple Addresses
- Newsletters
- Polls
- Popular Products
- Printing-friendly
- Product Image Attaching
- Searching
- Product Reviews
- Reordering
- Returns
- Product Rating
- Search Cloud
- Sitemap
- Social Bookmarking
- Tell Friends
- Wishlist
Related: Best Premium And Opencart Extension Downloads For Ecommerce Websites
Designing
OpenCart
Hearing from the number of Responsive Paid OpenCart themes in the official marketplace. Its developers also recognize the meaning of website design for its success and attractiveness.
There you will find 1500+ designs with any rating, for any budget and any type of online store.
There are also 1500+ OpenCart designs at the TemplateMonster and less than 650 at Themeforest. You can not but agree, that the choice is rather wide.
PrestaShop
How to catch a new visitor’s attention and encourage them to browse further and explore an assortment?
The stylish and attractive website design is the answer.
What happens to PrestaShop, the design opportunities here are nearly endless.
Moreover, in such a wide choice of designs, you can find the theme at any price; there is even a small part of free ones!.
If you ever wish to edit a current Fashion PrestaShop theme or create a new one. You will need specific HTML and CSS knowledge as well as design expertise, but in general, this is not impossible.
A different crucial aspect of an eCommerce design is mobile-responsiveness. And both PrestaShop marketplace and other platforms discussed above offer a wide variety of mobile-responsive or mobile-only themes.
But store in mind that the mobile-only templates will not be desktop-responsive.
Navigation & Search
OpenCart
“Easy find – easy buy” – is the best kind of OpenCart’s navigation system.
A store admin can build filters the same way the categories are created. This way clients can quickly refine and narrow down their search.
PrestaShop
It stands out with its advanced system of Search and Navigation, and it is perhaps one of the reasons it is so widely popular.
There are the following features:
- Search Indexing
- Filters by Material and Colour.
- Advanced Autocomplete by name, reference, and price.
- Priority search, when the store admin configures which elements will return in search results.
Furthermore, there is a default Layered Navigation filter in PrestaShop. What is more, also you can always implement additional navigation and search capabilities by installing proper plugins.
Multi-Language
OpenCart
This eCommerce platform is possible in more than 40 languages, and their number is only growing.
Among the available languages are even right-to-left ones like Arabic and Hebrew.
PrestaShop
Install PrestaShop admin panel allows you to add 75 languages; such a large number of available languages poses wonderful advantages in case you decide to run multiple stores in different languages.
Multi-Store
OpenCart
It keeps up with the recent eCommerce tendencies and also allows merchants to run multiple stores from a single admin panel.
So, This way, every piece of data about orders, customers, and stores is at your fingertips, allowing you to see the whole picture without logging into different accounts.
PrestaShop
It has a default functionality for beginning and running various stores from the same admin panel and possibly this very feature makes this eCommerce platform clarification so attractive to entrepreneurs.
This functionality allows you to design and run multiple stores with a different selection of products and languages for many countries.
You can also build shop groups and make a custom domain or subdomain for each store.
Inventory Management
OpenCart
It has primary inventory management capabilities, allowing the trader to keep track of the items in stock from the admin panel.
PrestaShop
Management of the item change and stock has never been more comfortable than with PrestaShop.
The platform performs UPC or EAN13 barcode symbology, marketing the tracking process uniformly and fast.
Furthermore, all inventory management data is exportable to your computer in CSV format.
Manage Megamenu in PrestaShop 1.7 theme – Webibazaar Templates
Payment System Support
OpenCart
OpenCart supports a large number of Payment systems, from bank transfers to online payment:
- 2Checkout
- Alipay Pay
- Alipay Cross-border
- Amazon Pay
- Authorize.Net (AIM)
- Authorize.Net (SIM)
- Bank Transfer
- BluePay Hosted Form
- BluePay Redirect (Requires SSL)
- CardConnect Cardinality
- Cheque / Money Order
- Cash On Delivery
- Divido
- eWay Payment
- First Data EMEA Connect (3DSecure Enabled)
- First Data EMEA Web Service API
- Free Checkout
- G2A Pay
- Global pay Redirect
- Global pay Remote
- PayPal
- PayPal Express Checkout
… and many others
PrestaShop
PrestaShop recommends the following payment systems and methods:
- Authorize.Net AIM
- Authorize.Net SIM
- Barclaycard CPI
- Barclaycard MPI
- HSBC API
- HSBC CPI
- PayPal Standard and Pro
- Skrill
- Stripe
- WorldPay
- Offline Processing
- Offline Methods
In the PrestaShop marketplace, you can choose from official payment methods add-ons including PayPal, HiPay, Skrill, Authorize.net, and Pos payment.
Cost Of Additional Configuration
OpenCart
OpenCart is also a free eCommerce templates solution, only the same as PrestaShop. The domain and hosting registration payments will need to be paid.
As for further configuration with themes and modules, the price for them is reasonable. The price of a constant them does not exceed $100, and an average module costs from $20 to $100.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a free platform, you will still require to pay hosting and domain registration costs.
Since the variety of hosting is up to you, the final sum of these costs is hard to predict.
When comes to customization, there are both premium and free PrestaShop modules, templates, and extensions.
However, a common theme at the PrestaShop marketplace costs $96, an average module. Ranges from free to €699, of a module – from free to €699.
Conclusion
So, This was the complete comparison of two popular eCommerce solutions – OpenCart and PrestaShop.
Which one to choose is up to you, but I hope the article will help you make up your mind.
More Blogs:
How To Manage HTML Content Module In OpenCart – Webibazaar Templates
What is the Difference Between OpenCart and Shopify?
Why Choose Prestashop For Creating An Online eCommerce Store?